


Vault 106 (Try Not to Swallow Any Blood)

by zorkyakmorgan



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 3
Genre: Blood and Gore, Body Horror, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Hallucinations, Horror, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Light Angst, Mild Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-26
Updated: 2020-02-26
Packaged: 2021-02-27 21:20:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,308
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22902322
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zorkyakmorgan/pseuds/zorkyakmorgan
Summary: They came here for a reason. There was a chance that Dr. James was in here somewhere, maybe being held captive by one of these creeps. He's just saying it would be better if they had each other's backs instead of splitting up, but it was fine. All good. Totally cool.As Butch made his way down the corridor, the door to the far left room slid open on its own. Okay, maybe not so cool.
Relationships: Butch DeLoria/Female Lone Wanderer
Comments: 1
Kudos: 20





	Vault 106 (Try Not to Swallow Any Blood)

Butch crept through the hallway of Vault 106's residential quarters. He didn’t get why Frankie would insist that they split up like this, but if it meant catching up with her dad faster then he was willing to help. Mostly. To be honest if things got too freaky he was totally out, but he would be cheering her from the sidelines. At the start of their exploration they had both been naively hopeful. Maybe this was another vault full of people who would welcome them, or at least answer some of their questions. It became abundantly clear that wasn't going to happen when the first living person they came across rushed Franks with a steak knife. It's a good thing her reflexes had gotten so fast ‘cause he was too freaked out by the guy's disfigured face to react in time. Everybody in this place looked like they'd climbed out of a wood chipper, and this being a vault full of knife-wielding maniacs might have had something to do with it.

Whatever. They came here for a reason. There was a chance that Dr. James was in here somewhere, maybe being held captive by one of these creeps. He's just saying it would be better if they had each other's backs instead of splitting up, but it was fine. All good. Totally cool.

As Butch made his way down the corridor, the door to the far left room slid open on its own. Okay, maybe not so cool.

Tightening his grip on his pistol — god help him if he actually had to use the thing — he approached the door. The closer he got, the heavier the air felt. It smelled like the recycled air in the reactor level, where it was never quite filtered enough and felt like the beginnings of a headache. He peered around the door frame and saw Frankie cowered in the corner of the room. He almost skidded across the floor in the rush to her side, crouching down next to her.

"Franks! What the hell, you were supposed to be going to the labs–" He cut himself off when he saw the look in her eyes, and her hands cupped to her face. He hadn't seen her look so afraid since the night she left the vault. Her shaking hands covered her nose and mouth, and where her wrists met a trickle of blood was steadily seeping through.

"Holy shit. What happened?"

Despite her mouth being covered, her voice came through clear.

"Butch, I don't know what's going on but you need to help me. Please."

"What do you need?"

"Over there, in the corner," She gestured with her elbows, still clutching at her face.

"What's in the corner? Why are you bleeding?" Butch tried to keep his voice steady, but his panic rose as he watched his friend tremble.

"Please, Butch– please, I need your help," Frankie's voice was getting more desperate. She kept looking behind him, towards the corner of the room nearest to the door. Still crouched next to her, he turned to look. In the offending corner, there was a reddish lump. It wasn't moving but didn't exactly look friendly and welcoming, either. An animal or a bug maybe? Had it attacked her?

"What is it?" Butch asked, carefully keeping his tone low in case whatever it was could be spooked into attacking again.

"I need you to get it and bring it here, bring it to me, please, please Butch--" she replied quickly. Her voice was becoming watery, and he could tell she was fighting back tears. He put what he hoped was a comforting hand on her knee and nodded.

Slowly he made his way across the room, only now noticing that they were in the living room of one of the smaller vault suites. It reminded him of the apartment he and his mom had shared. The furniture had all been either torn to shreds or flipped and stacked to one side. So, pretty much exactly like his apartment had been, at least at the end. Pushing thoughts of home and of his mom out of mind, he cautiously approached the lump. The closer he got to it, the more he wanted to look away. The red goo that he'd picked up on was, unsurprisingly, blood. Through bloody strands of tissue and semi-congealed chunks, bone was peeking through. The top of the object was covered by very human-looking flesh that had already started to lose its color.

"Fuckin' gross," Butch murmured. He shouted back, "Are you sure you uh, need this?" He winced at the thought of having to touch it.

"Please Butch, please– I need you, please–" Her voice had become raspy and had an edge of desperation to it. Steeling himself, Butch held his breath and reached down. The thing was still warm, surprisingly weighty and dense in his hand. He thought at least to grab one of the less goopy flesh parts, but when he tried to lift it off the floor the skin sloughed off in his hand.

"Jesus, fuck!"

What had fallen out from the handful of skin was obvious from the teeth and the mass of purpling muscle. It was a lower jaw that had been cleanly removed at the joint, but whatever had done it had taken a hefty slice of tongue with it. It felt weird to notice, given the gruesome nature of the scene before him, but the teeth looked familiar. There was a big chip taken out of one of the front incisors, like the owner had experienced some kind of falling accident. As though owner had tripped over someone’s leg in math class and had slammed face-first into a desk, cancelling class and forcing the leg-having culprit to give a lengthy apology in front of the jaw-owner and her dad.

Butch felt the hairs rise on the back of his neck. He slowly turned around to face Frankie. She still sat crouched in the opposite corner of the room and holding her face, looking at him with fearful, wet eyes.

"Please, Butch. Help me," No. No way. This isn't happening. What the fu–

His thoughts were interrupted when she moved her hands from her face. What had seemed like a simple covering of her mouth was holding back a torrent of blood which flooded her lap and soaked into her shirt. Chunks of gristle and clots of blood fell from what was left of her lower jaw. The stump of her tongue hung limply, and he could see into the meat of her throat where her breaths were causing the blood to bubble and foam. Her bloodied hands came to rest calmly at her sides.

"Butch, bring that to me," she spoke, even though the dangling meat of her mouth didn't move with her words as much as it pulsed with the blood coursing through it. Her eyes squinted at him in frustration. "Just once, would you please help me?"

His body moved on autopilot. Despite his disgust, he grabbed the lump of flesh and bone and returned shakily to her side, holding it out to her.

" _You_ have to put it back. _You_ have to fix it," Frankie said. “You owe me.” Her voice had lost all of it's frightened and tearful qualities. She spoke with a cold insistence that she normally saved for her father. "I can't keep being the one who helps you out of trouble. If I bleed out you’ll have no one left." Her tone was becoming more angry, more demanding. "You’re going to help me."

"Franks, I–"

"Would you rather let me sit here and die like your mom did? For _once_ in your life you’ve gotta something for _somebody else_ , for fuck's sake–"

He stopped her tirade by jamming the bone back into place in her skull. Or at least, he aimed for where the thought it was supposed to go. He's not a medical expert. Her blood slipped over his hands as he heard the bones crack together where they met under her cheekbones. Her eyes glinted with rage as they stared into his. Her newly-affixed jaw dropped as she let out a scream that knocked Butch back onto his ass. The overhead fluorescent lights surged, then burned out. After a cold, dark moment the lights snapped back on, and Frankie was gone. Alone in the room was Butch, his hands warm and sticky with blood, sitting in front of the body of a man whose face and neck were torn to shreds.

\----------------------------------

Just one floor above him, Frankie was rifling through the cabinets of Vault 106's recreation center looking for any useful electronics that she could salvage for scrap. The search for her dad had come up dry; go figure. This would’ve been so much easier if she’d been able to figure out from his notes which vault her father was ultimately headed to. It's hard to focus on reading when a supermutant is up your ass with a sledgehammer, so she only caught the gist of what his plan was before his holotapes had been smashed to bits. At this point, Frankie wasn't sure if she would hug him or slap him across the face when she found him. If she found him. Shit.

 _I should just call it quits and find Butch_ , she thought. The air was getting thicker and she could feel the start of a migraine coming on, half from the dim lighting and half from the frustration of not tracking down her dickhead father.

She gathered all she’d managed to find, sweeping the little pieces of hardware and intact machine parts into her bag, and turned around just as the door to the rec room shut. Standing in front of it was someone she thought she would never see again.

"…Stevie," Frankie whispered, her breath coming up short. She couldn't summon the strength to make her voice louder. Last she'd seen of Stevie Mack, she had really _seen_ Stevie Mack – his brains had been visible through the deep canyon she’d split in his face. Here he was, standing in front of her with a soulless look in his eyes. Not entirely unlike how normally he looked to be fair, but it still managed to freeze her to the spot.

"Hello, Frances," Stevie said. His tone was almost casual as he grinned with a full set of teeth, despite her vivid memory of knocking them out with her bat. "Looks like I might have the upper hand this time."

It hit her all at once. _Shit_. She patted down her holsters, her pocket where she kept a small penknife, everywhere. No weapons on her. He must have taken them. How he’d gotten them without her noticing was unclear, but why he did it was obvious. She had a track record when it came to attacking him.

In the moment it took her to look back up, Stevie had crossed the room and she was trapped between his body and the cabinet she had been looting only a few moments ago. She raised her hands in submission, trying to summon the courage to speak without her voice shaking.

"Stevie, just listen–"

"If you try to tell me you're sorry I'll kill you right here. You may be a monster, Frances, but you're not a liar."

He was right, she wasn't sorry. After everything that had happened growing up, she would never regret killing Stevie Mack. If that made her a monster, so be it.

"How are you alive after–"

"After you bashed my face in while I was totally unarmed?" He interrupted her again. The way he grinned at her was chilling.

“….Yep.”

“You really think you can just get away with murder? Like you’re so special that nobody will stop you?” As he spoke, Stevie was stepping forward, pushing Frankie further against the cupboard that was cutting into her back. His breath came out in acrid bursts, reminding her of the smell that wafted up from carrion left on the side of the road. Upon closer inspection, he was looking less like a person to argue with and more like something out of a nightmare. His skin looked marbled, like the light blue veins running beneath his face were all that held the flesh onto his skull.

“How is it that you could look into my sister’s eyes and tell her you don’t know why you killed me? You know DAMN WELL–” Stevie’s right hand slammed against the tabletop behind her, pinning her in place, while his left grabbed her hair and roughly pulled her up and level to his eyes. She could see his skin slipping and sagging away from his eye sockets, his dull blue eyes looked like they were deflating in the greenish light _. “– you know damn well why you did it_.”

Frankie’s eyes watered; she was afraid to blink. The tremor in her voice was inescapable.

“You… hurt my best friend… I- I couldn’t let you get away with that.” As she spoke her face twisted up in disgust. Stevie barked out a laugh that almost sounded wet. Flecks of blood and spit landed on her face, making her flinch. Avoiding eye contact with the ghoulish man, her eyes flitted to the doors that led out to safety. If she could just knock him back or get a few inches of leverage…

Almost as soon as she’d had the thought, an opportunity presented itself. The hand he had slammed on the table, effectively trapping her arm, slipped closer to the edge of the cabinet. It left her just enough space to slam her closed fist down against his fingers with a wet crack. The bones in his hand came apart like the joints were made of gelatin, leaving behind a pool of blood and pieces of bone and sinew spattered across the tabletop.

As soon as she saw that her blow had landed Frankie pushed away from Stevie, wrenching out of the grip of his intact hand and losing a decent chunk of her dark hair in the process. Without even a wince Stevie’s limp, mangled hand came up to rest on her neck and pinned her low to the wall with a force she hadn’t expected from the carcass of her former enemy.

 _“L ook m e i n th ee eyees and t e ll m e Bu t ch di dn’ t gget ex accct ly w h a t he w a n te d_ ,” he rasped out. His face was fully slipping off the muscle, obstructing his mouth and nose. Pressing her into the ground, he jammed his ruined hand into Frankie’s mouth, choking her with blood and gristle. Her stomach roiled as she did her best to kick out and push the living corpse off of her. Her foot sunk into his midsection like he was hollow inside — like he was a Halloween decoration with a grotesquely detailed latex face but a body made of burlap and newspaper. The toe of her boot almost snagged under his ribs as she pulled back, scrambling to get away from him. The fingers that he’d lodged in her mouth tore away from the bone with a horrifying crackle. The force of her kick knocked him back just enough for her to roll onto her side and spit the gory digits out onto the floor, before rising to her feet and running for the exit. She didn’t look back as Stevie howled like a dying animal for the second time in as many months.

\----------------------------------

Butch was pulled from his trance by a sticky hand shaking his shoulder.

“Butch, we need to get the fuck out of here,” Frankie said.

He could barely tear his eyes away from the corpse in front of him. When phantom-Frankie had disappeared, it was like his body had frozen in place. He couldn’t stop thinking that she was the one dead in front of him, that he had been the one to rip her face apart. Thankfully, it seemed like he was wrong this time.

“Seriously, man, we need to leave.”

“Yeah… yeah, o-okay,” Butch mumbled, rising to his feet with Frankie’s help. He wasn’t ready to turn around and look at her, trusting that she was the real deal based on how raspy and shaken-up she sounded. Apparently this wasn’t enough for her, because as soon as Butch was on his feet Frankie grabbed his shoulders and spun him around so they were face to face.

He wished she hadn’t. Frankie’s face looked haunted, her eyes bloodshot and sunken deep in their sockets. It looked like she’d been in a fight; her hair was clumped together with blood and her cheeks were scraped up as though she had been roughly dragged. More worrying was her mouth, which was ringed with a beard of dried blood. Her eyes scanned over his body with a frenzied intensity.

“You’re _you_ , right?” She spoke quietly but her tone was harsh. “Like you’re not some freaky dead guy wearing Butch’s face?”

Thank god, he wasn’t the only one who was losing it. “I am if you are. Or uh, I’m not if you aren’t,” Butch babbled. “Franks what the hell is g–”

Frankie cut him off. “Good. We’re leaving.” She spun around, grabbing him by the hand and leading them toward the door. Rather than brush her off like he normally would ‘cause, like, a guy has his dignity, he let himself be led down the hallway and up several flights of stairs. Maybe seeing his friend’s face mangled and spitting with rage only a short while ago left Butch too raw to turn down the gesture of comfort.

She spoke without turning her head as she checked around the corners for any errant attackers. “I thought something was weird when all the maintenance notes wouldn’t shut up about the air system, but I’m a fucking idiot and didn’t think of the implications.” Her hand slipped out of his as she brought it up to her mouth, lightly scrubbing at the bloodstain there. He pulled his own hand back to — hopefully in a cool, subtle way — wipe the sweat off his palm before running shaky fingers through his hair. They were fine. This was fine.

“I, uh, I think I might have killed that guy. Or at least I really fucked up his neck…” Butch trailed off. Frankie finally stopped, turning to look at him.

“I think I ate a dead guy’s fingers, so we’re in the same boat.”

Butch blinked.

The rest of their hasty return to the vault entrance was spent in silence. If he was being honest with himself, Butch was still fighting the fear that at any moment Frankie would turn around and attack him. Or she would melt into a steaming mass of gore, or she would simply disappear altogether. Maybe she was fearing the same because while she didn’t turn and check in on him as they walked, her hand drifted back to touch his arm on multiple occasions. They were both shaken up and it was gonna suck, because he knew she was gonna make them talk about it later.

Finally they reached their destination, the vault door thankfully still open from when they arrived a few hours ago. The harsh light of midday blinded the two for a moment, before their eyes adjusted and showed them what a bad state they were in. Between the two it looked like they had taken turns tossing blood bags at each other like some kind of grisly game of dodge ball. Butch’s stomach churned as he caught his breath and the foul smell wafted up, sun heating the stains on his clothing.

Frankie, in contrast, seemed unaffected by the blood and gore that slicked the front of her shirt and gummed under her fingernails. She had brought up the map on her Pip-Boy and was studying it closely as she leaned against a nearby rock, either not noticing or not caring that Butch was shaking and trying not to gag just a few feet away. After a while, she looked up at him. Her eyes softened when she saw the state he was in.

“There’s a river basin like fifteen minutes away. We can wash off there.”

Butch swallowed a mouthful of spit and righted himself. “Yeah, okay.”

\----------------------------------

The river water was murky and nearly stagnant, but it would do the job. Frankie waded out until she was hip-deep before leaning down to soak her hair. The water ran red as she struggled to comb her fingers through the knots and crusted tangles. Upside-down, she glanced back towards Butch. He was crouched down in the shallows, scrubbing his shirt under the water in a futile attempt to get the dark stains out. Her own clothes were discarded, safely soaking under some nearby rocks while she tackled her whole face situation.

“You totally sure it’s safe to be here? Like, no nearby raider camps or nothin’?” Butch called out to her after blowing damp hair out of his eyes.

“I know the guys who stand lookout up on that overpass,” she said, pointing towards the cluster of shacks that made up Arefu. “Makes it kind of weird to be half naked out here, but what can you do I guess.”

“And me being here isn’t weird,” Butch replied. Frankie looked back at him as she squeezed out her hair. Rivulets of red-tinted water ran down her shoulders and stained her bra.

“I think in this moment of shared trauma you can give me a break and not make a thing out of it,” she said. He huffed out a laugh and almost got back to scrubbing before looking back up at her.

“What exactly…” he trailed off, looking around as though there was anybody to overhear. “What kind of shit did you see in there?” Frankie crouched down to rinse off her hands and tried to find the words. Not sensing her struggle, he continued. “Like, I don’t know about you but that gas had me seeing and hearing some crazy stuff.”

“What kind of crazy stuff?” Frankie asked. Part of her was dying to know what had made her friend rip a man’s jaw out, but a bigger part was afraid he had seen the exact same thing she had. Lord knows he’d been through enough with that bastard already.

“Uh… hah,” Butch chuckled uncomfortably and shifted to sit back in the water. “I saw you, I guess? But not you, obviously. You were…” he trailed off. She noticed he wasn’t looking her in the eye, but he never did when they talked like this. “Uh– it was like… You were bleeding from your face and just screaming at me. About being selfish and about my mom and shit.” His brow furrowed as he talked.

“Shit,” she replied. “Sorry.”

“You didn’t do anything, it’s fine.” He sighed and leaned back, tilting his head to look at the clouds that were rolling in with the afternoon. “Guessin’ you saw something kinda like that too?”

“Yeah, sort of.” Frankie waded toward her clothes, in the hope that maybe if she kept busy he would drop the subject and not pry too far. But he’s Butch, so of course–

“Sort of? C’mon, Franks, you know you’ve gotta give me more than that.”

“I don’t really want to talk about it.”

“Come on. What if I told you that Fake-You made me grab your jaw and shove it back in your face?”

“Seriously, drop it.”

“What makes your freak-out more special than my freak-out?”

“I saw Stevie Mack and he made me eat his fucking fingers, alright?” she snapped. Butch fell quiet as his face shifted from a teasing smirk into something else that Frankie couldn’t place. Seconds passed without either saying a word. “How do we feel about that?” She said, quietly.

Butch didn’t look up. His gaze was fixed on the ripples of water in front of him. She couldn’t bear to break the silence by wringing out her soaked clothes so Frankie just stood there, watching his face and waiting for any kind of reaction. After a while, he let out a quiet chuckle.

“He made you… eat his fingers?” Butch asked, finally looking up at her. He tried to sound amused, only betrayed by the tightness in his throat that kept his voice low and quiet. She smiled gently back.

“Yeah, god knows I couldn’t tell you what the fuck that meant,” she said, making her way over to him and plopping down to sit in the water beside Butch. “It ended up being some dead guy’s hand and it was fuckin’ disgusting.” She laughed softly at the awfulness of the memory, Butch laughed too. Once again a silence fell between them, as they listened to the sound of the water lapping up on the shore. _Don’t say anything else_ , Frankie thought. _If it gets any more somber I’m gonna die. Just leave this be_.

“I’d kill him again if I had the chance,” Frankie said. “Just so you know.” Immediate regret. She should have just dropped it, but now she’d said it and it was out there.

The seconds that passed felt like hours.

“Thanks, Frankie,” Butch said. His voice was so quiet she could barely hear it over the ambient sounds of the wasteland. He cleared his throat and said louder, “Good thing you don’t have to. Who knows, you might even bite his fingers off.”

Frankie huffed a laugh, partly out of relief. “Yeah, I should make that my new battle tactic. _Beware the Lone Wanderer: mess with her and she’ll bite your fucking fingers off_.”

“That would be a hard one for Three Dog to spin and make sound good.”

“Eh, he always finds a way.”

**Author's Note:**

> Vaguely AU where Trouble On the Homefront/returning to the vault happens before finding pops. God, can you imagine if the pacing wasn’t hot garbage and you had like little interstitial adventures between all the moments of Not Finding Your Dad? Oh, Bethesda.


End file.
